Law of holes
Adage
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Meaning
Attribution
The adage has been attributed to a number of sources. It appeared in print on page six of The Washington Post dated 25 October 1911, in the form: "Nor would a wise man, seeing that he was in a hole, go to work and blindly dig it deeper..."[6][7]
In 1983, Bill Brock was quoted "Let me tell you about the law of holes: If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."[8]
In the United Kingdom, it has been referred to as "Healey's first law of holes"[4] after politician Denis Healey, who used the adage in the 1980s and later.[3]
See also
- Escalation of commitment – Human behavior pattern in which the participant takes on increasing risk
- Gresham's law – Monetary principle
- List of proverbial phrases
- Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel – 1939 children's book by Virginia Lee Burton
- Pyrrhic victory – Victory at a cost tantamount to defeat
- Sunk cost fallacy – Unrecoverable cost that has been incurred